[Pkg-privacy-maintainers] Bug#850217: Bug#850217: parcimonie-applet: status icon menu is broken

[Antoine Beaupré]

On 2017-01-20 12:52:52, intrigeri wrote:
> Hi,
>
> GtkStatusIcon (along with the whole "system tray" concept) has been
> deprecated in 3.14, so I'm not surprised that it starts breaking.
> On my desktop it's even worse: I can't see the icon anywhere at all.
> Still, as long as one single binary package includes both the backend
> and the applet, I think it's worth shipping the package in Stretch, as
> the backend is still useful in itself.
>
> Regarding future plans, quoting what I wrote on
> https://bugs.debian.org/799942#24:
>
>   "For the record, my plan is to add a GNOME Shell extension, and
>    deprecate the old tray icon. Once this is done, I'll happily take good
>    patches that port the old tray status applet to whatever interface is
>    suitable for non-GNOME desktops these days. If this does not happen,
>    there are great chances that I'll remove the old tray status applet at
>    some point."
>
> I've started writing the aforementioned GNOME Shell extension back in
> June, but did not manage to complete it in time for Stretch, so I'm
> sorry that Stretch will include a poorly working applet :( … unless
> someone wants to try and complete that work in the next few days, in
> which case I'll happily share the initial skeleton I wrote in case it
> might help.

Hi,

I haven't looked in details at GNOME Shell, but I suspect that the whole
"system tray" concept is not deprecated at all. The standard, which
dates from 2009, is still publicly documented here:

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/systemtray-spec/

... and is not marked as "deprecated" there. GtkStatusIcon *is* marked
as deprected in GTK 3.14:

https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkStatusIcon.html

... but they suggest using GNotification instead:

https://developer.gnome.org/gio/unstable/GNotification.html

... I am not sure what *that* does or if supports the "tray" - I doubt
it.

I wouldn't rely on GTK's decisions to see if a feature is officially
"deprecated" or not. For example, QT still supports the "Tray Icon"
concept:

http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qsystemtrayicon.html#details

It supports either the old systray implementation or the "new D-Bus
StatusNotifierItem" interface, documented here:

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/StatusNotifierItem/StatusNotifierItem/

I assume that may be similar to the GNotification system in GTK/Gnome.

Anyways, long story short, i still think that concept remains and should
stay, and there's a way to implement it in a wide-compatibility
way... Now, I understand that parcimonie is Perl/GTK and will not change
frameworks just for fun, so I'm not sure how that would look there. ;)

But don't rip out the old systray support - it's *still* "whatever
interface is suitable for non-GNOME" these days, as far as I understand
it (no idea about what KDE does). The systray is what I use here anyways
under xmonad, under Debian stretch. In it I see a lot of apps that still
use it: Network Manager, Workrave, Redshift and GMPC... I use it a lot.

Please don't give up on us old farts. ;)

A.

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